One of the major appeals of the Ouya was that it allowed a standard and open way for smaller developers to get into the home console scene. The standardisation is really the whole appeal of consoles; it standardises PC architecture so developers know exactly what the game will be like when it’s deployed.

With this news the “standard” is most likely going to be non-existent in a year or so with different specifications needing to be catered to; increasing work load. Of course increasing flash memory and RAM is fine as it requires little to no change in development. CPUs and GPUs on the other hand require a lot as people will be expecting games to use the increased capabilities.

A bad move I’d say.

KurisuMakise

It can be a bad move but it depends on how they handle the SDK, there are some pros consumer side wise though. Since they’d be able to take advantage of the falling prices, add in extra goodies, etc. Though I’m not sure every year is necessary myself. Maybe every two years but either way if the games will remain backwards compatible, then it’s possible to probably target the lowest spec and upgrade your own games accordingly.

… Fail! after all does people who helped out with the kickstarter … that is mess up you sold them a has been model. How are devs suppose to sell people games if they wont be able to run them with their version and are forced to upgrade to play newer games… wtf. I never did trust kickstarter and the Ouya was cool because it was going to be cheap and supported and all we were going to pay was $100. FAIL FAIL FAIL!!

If the games are going to be backwards compatible, then either they’re going to run poorly on older models, or there will be no incentive to upgrade to the latest one.

Michael Garling

I think what was meant was that all Ouya games can be played on the newer models, ie. it won’t be like with the PS3 not being able to play PS2 titles, or the Wii U not being able to play GCN, etc.

drproton

I don’t really see a cause for alarm. So there might be a handful of games that don’t run on the first generation hardware in a year or two?

Regardless, the $100 sku was a good price and we won’t see any fractionation of the userbase for a while. Many of the games will be multiplatform apart from Ouya anyway, meaning they will support multiple hardware configurations.

If I have to spend another $100 in two years to play an interesting game on the latest hardware, so be it. At least my controllers will still work and all of my software can be transferred over directly.

howardmoonish

Horrible idea, but at least they are upfront about it.

Txtsword

Doesn’t “being upfront about it” end after already getting all that kickstarter money?